"A Complete Personality 180": Is It Real or Were You Duped?

Relationships are a game of chance. Friends, family, significant others.. I'm talking about anyone. You meet someone and things are going great. Then something happens. A life event that turns their world upside down. It may have nothing to do with you, but the change they are about to embrace will affect you.

Can someone do a complete personality 180?

Can they go from being your sweet pal or significant other to someone who picks fights with you about everything you used to agree on?

Were they like that all along and were putting up a front so you wouldn't see their true selves?

There are many arguments from both sides.

I met someone years ago who always had a smile on her face. She would never have a bad comment about anyone and always made it a point to build people up. She lost her father in a car accident. I would never have seen it coming, but she went to a very dark place where she still remains today. No longer was everything rosy. She is extremely negative and now goes out of her way to put people down and hurt them. On the one side, we could say she has never lost someone close to her and she had absolutely no coping skills whatsoever. Her method of grieving was to make everyone as miserable as she is. The other side will argue that she was always a heartless bitch, but was merely holding her tongue and not speaking her mind. I guess only her diary knows the truth.

Another example is my husband. We knew each other before we dated. Yes there were things about him that irked me. I'm sure a few of my own habits drove him a little batty as well. All in all, we had a good solid relationship. We were friends first and held to that, even when we started dating. He was the first person I told things and vice versa. Our lines of communication were always open and we could talk about anything. After we got married, we had a honeymoon baby. It was a very rough pregnancy, but we managed and I thought we were okay. Then he started spending more time at work. Longer hours and more time to complain to his coworkers. He stopped communicating with me and kept the talk flowing with them. I told him it bugged me. He started talking to me again, only for me to discover his affair. Once that was 'out in the open', he took it as a thumbs-up to keep seeing her. I was in shock. He would come home, sleep, spend a few minutes with the baby then off to work he would go. He even started finding excuses to go on his day off.

Could I have seen this coming?

Depends on who you ask. I thought we could figure out and get through anything, but here he was trying to escape his responsibilities by dating someone else. Some say he was a dog all along and now was just showing the world who he was. I refused to believe that one. I have trust issues. Major ones. I tried like mad to find any little reason not to be or stay with him. I thought I had found someone I could spend the rest of my life with.

Life is not fair. Some people catch the short end of the stick more than others. What influences a major personality change? Is it just merely someone showing their 'true colors'? I guess everyone has their own opinions about this one.

As for me, I believe I married one man and ended up being married to someone who couldn't handle marriage. He had no idea what he was getting into and no amount of explaining will help either.